Colors
by i m a g i n e dream b e
Summary: Grey, grey, grey, grey, grey. The world is grey to Sherlock until suddenly it flickers into focus.
1. Chapter 1

Grey.

Grey grey grey grey grey.

It's all so grey around him. The colors have vanished—or perhaps they were never around. He goes through his days mechanically, only pausing to glance at the bigger things. To search them for color, except there never are any.

The only color he knows is scarlet. Deep scarlet. The scarlet of blood, the scarlet of his cheeks as he dashes madly through the streets, the scarlet of the pipettes that he squeezes gently, allowing substance to meet substance with a hiss or a bang or a faint explosion.

But there is only ever scarlet.

Sometimes he thinks there is more— a dash of the darkest blue, close enough to be mistaken as black to anybody's eyes but his own as he slips his bow lightly across the strings of his violin, fills the air with music, blows a breath of color into his surroundings for just a little bit.

And sometimes the reddest orange as he lies on the sofa, watching black and white and grey and red and blue dance around him. Only very rarely blue in these situations, because he can hardly control himself— can only take in breaths and release them, can only think and breathe and sleep as he falls deeper into the clutches of the substances he continues to abuse.

But they are too close— too close to black and grey and white and red— and soon they morph into it, the blue fading to black with the silence of the notes he has cast into the room, the sensation of waking up in his bathroom, cuts standing out against his skin that he cannot remember putting there, broken glass beside him from where he has broken another test tube. And Mycroft scolds him, and sometimes he thinks he sees him cry a little— cry that his brother is so out of control, so bored. He hears the words casually thrown around: depression, anxiety, even attention deficit disorder. But he doesn't have attention deficit disorder— he pays too much attention, sees too much, and cares too little.

.

I'm kind of playing around with depressed Sherlock right now. I can see mild pointers as to where this will go, but right now the journey is as much mine as it is yours.

I own nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

.

"I'm John," John introduces himself as sparsely as the room he probably sleeps in, in as Spartan a manner as his clothes must be, his tent must have been. As simple as his hair and the cut of his jaw and the shoes on his feet and the name on his lips.

Simplicity somehow becomes a color to him. It is yellow and brown and blue and green and blond and freckled.

It's comfortable.

Sherlock has never known comfortable before. He has never known _nice_ or _alright_ or any of those vaguely content words that people said with their stupid, dull little half smiles; but suddenly, he does. Suddenly he understands, if only to the slightest, _barest_ degree.

Because he's so flustered and noisy and just exactly what he had thought he didn't need. The silent presence threatening to drown him and suffocate him is suddenly revealed and shoved away by this boisterous, _floaty _creature who enters his flat and makes himself at home, and Sherlock cannot help but grudgingly enjoy it all as it happens.

Enjoyment. That's new.

_Catalogue, file for later use._

.

_So is this the flat, then?_

Yes.

_It's nice._

Yes.

_Is that a skull there? And a head in the fridge?_

Yes.

_Blimey. That's a bit mad. Want me to make some tea, then?_

I…what? No.

Yes. Sure.

_Do you play violin?_

_Don't be ridiculous, you've got one right there._

_Sherlock._

_Hm. That's pretty amazing._

_Yes, it really you play for me?_

_Ah, come on. I'm tired, and music's nice. Just a little._

_Come on._

Alright.

.

Everything is dimly grey until John Watson steps into his life, and then it suddenly halts, blurs, shifts into focus. Stark blacks against stark whites and suddenly the blues and oranges are blues and oranges and not blacks and scarlets. And suddenly scarlet is not quite so necessary in all the forms it once was, and the pipettes are not found broken on the floor quite so often because John would make a fuss over the broken glass with the _Sherlock, are you bleeding_ and the _what do you mean you're used to this_ and the _of course you need a hospital. I'm a doctor, I know these things. If I didn't know better I'd think you were—_.

This particular train of thought shuts abruptly with another cup of tea, and a flash of the same .

Against a stark black and a clean white and a haze of grey, lighter than before.

_Good for you_, he hears dimly, and he thinks he smiles for a second. But he can't be sure.

.


End file.
